Gun Control, Chicago Style...

The statistics are in.  4,331 people were shot in Chicago during the past year, and 762 of them died.

That's a 52% increase over 2015, and double the total number of gunshot deaths in New York City and Los Angeles, combined.  Consider that statistic!

Yet, Chicago has the absolutely toughest, most stringent, absolutely insanely difficult gun control laws of any city in America.  

So tough are they that it's nearly impossible to purchase a gun in the City of Chicago, or any of the 39 cities surrounding it.  

In fact, the only gun shop in the entire town is located in the downtown Police Station, and then is only open between the hours of 10:00 and 2:00 on alternate Thursdays. Could they make it any more difficult to buy a gun?  Yes, they could. Read on...

No other gun store can open there as new City codes prohibit the operation of a firearms sales facility within 500 feet of a park, a church, a playground, or a public building, or liquor store, or day care center, and 1,000 feet of a school. That means that 99.87% of the entire City is off-limits to the operation of a gun store.  Pretty sneaky, these Chicago politicians.


And to receive permission to actually take advantage of your 2nd Amendment Rights, permission you must have to buy a gun there, you must first submit a lengthy and costly application to the City via the Police Department.  Their approval process can take 8 or 9 months, or even longer, and approval is not guaranteed.

Then, you need to complete an 8-hour classroom safety course taught by a licensed firearms instructor.  That class, by the way, is not taught in the City.

Then, you need to complete 8 hours of training at a licensed firearms shooting range, which cannot be conducted all at one time.  Oh, by the way, there is no range in Chicago, and recent changes in codes, as referenced above, prevent the building of one in the future.  The nearest one is located more than 40 miles away.  

What, I ask rhetorically, if you don't have a car?  Or, money to travel there?  Ummm. Too bad, I guess.  No 2nd Amendment for you, Grasshopper!

Then, once you've finally, finally bought your gun, and then waited ten days to pick it up (like in California, they want to force you into a cooling-off period in case you're mad at somebody and want to buy a gun to separate them from their miserable life), you must immediately take it home.  It must then remain in your home, unloaded and locked away in a safe so that no one may accidentally shoot it. Including you, it seems, should a bad guy choose to make you a crime statistic.

And lastly, you may not take your shiny new gun into your garage.  Your garage, it seems, is not a part of your home, according to the City Fathers, and Mothers, and Others, in the Windy City.  Boy, these bozos really don't like guns, do they?

Now, if some bad guy actually breaks in, and you ask him to wait while you open your safe and take out your shiny new gun and then load it, and he/she/it acquiesces to your request, you may then use it to defend yourself, so long as you are within the confines of your own home.  Anywhere else, or under any other scenario then that exactly proscribed above, you will be charged with mayhem, brandishing a firearm, intentional discharge of a firearm within City limits, attempted murder, or murder if your aim is true, and probably double parking if they feel like piling on.   

And if the Bad Guy chooses not to wait, he/she/it/they will just go ahead and kill you, thus ending this little exercise in gun control overreach.  And what are the odds that the Blue Lives Matter folks will find the Bad Guy who did you in?  Less than 15%.

So, has all this "gun control" worked?  I refer you to my opening paragraph.  No, it hasn't.  And doesn't.  That's because disarming the law-abiding public only energizes the law breakers.  They view "Gun Free Zones" as "Target Rich Environments."  Think about it:  If you were bent on causing some illegality or mayhem, would you choose a location where members of the populace made it a point to carry concealed weapons, like Texas, say, or where members of the populace had been disarmed by their elected politicians, like Chicago?  Exactly.

And increasing the size of the fonts on the "Gun Free Zone" signs, or even using All Capital Letters, or even adding an "!" after it, makes no difference at all to those determined to break the law.

So where, you might ask, do all the guns that all the Bad Guys use to shoot and kill all those innocent people come from if obtaining a gun legally in Chicago isn't possible? They steal them.  Or they import them from out of the area or out of state.  And no law, no law will prevent them from engaging in their nefarious activities.  Nothing except turning this entire dumbass situation upside down and finally, finally permitting the law-abiding public to keep and bear arms (thank you, 2nd Amendment).   

In closing, you'll notice that this out-of-control statistic did not reference the State of Texas, where open carry of firearms has been in effect since January 1, 2016.  No, not a single incidence of an accident, or an unintended shooting, or death, has occurred over the period of an entire year as a consequence of this law.  Yes, lefty gun-grabbers frothed at the mouth when it passed, but they need not have worried. Like Kansas, and Oklahoma, and Tennessee, and Florida, and Utah, and Nevada, and so many other states, more guns in the hands of trained, qualified citizens equals less crime.

But hey, the otherwise-unemployables up there in that backwater town known as Sacramento haven't gotten the word.  They just passed another round of gun control legislation to further infringe upon the individual, inalienable, fundamental rights of American citizens to acquire and use firearms (that language is excerpted directly from the Supreme Court decision in "Heller v. Washington, D.C."  by the way.

And in the run-up to the 12/31/2016 effective date of those laws, Californians showed how they felt by purchasing more than twice as many so-called "assault rifles" here as in 2015 (364,643 versus 153,931).  And considering that nearly 1,000,000 firearms of all type were purchased in California in 2016, compared with about 700,000 in the prior year, a number more than double that of only five years ago, and considering that the number of guns in America has more than doubled since B. Hussein Obama was immaculated (a record 27 million were purchased nationwide!), I'm guessing these onerous new laws won't have too much effect. 

That's because I'm guessing we've already bought all the guns we think we need.  Your move, gun-grabbers...